Tag: athletic commissions

The latest political firestorm over MMA is happening right now in South Dakota, as a proposal to create a South Dakota Athletic Commission — which would regulate sports such as boxing, kick-boxing and mixed martial arts, making them safer and more accessible for fighters in the state — was submitted in a State Senate hearing today, amid protests that MMA is a dangerous, violent enterprise, and unfit for the good people of the Mount Rushmore State. You can listen to audio of the hearing right here.

“I’m offended that the state would legitimize cage-fighting and the bloody violence that those kinds of spectacles create. I think it’s interesting that we declare that it is a crime for one human being to strike another, and yet the state now proceeds to legitimize, and label a sport, cage-fighting.”

One of Daugaard’s main allies in the anti-MMA crusade is State Representative Steve Hickey (booooooooo!), who has offered an amendment to the proposal that would ban MMA, while still allowing boxing and traditional martial arts. “The conversation on violence in society needs to start somewhere — why not with our most violent entertainment, and that’s mixed martial arts,” Hickey wrote on Saturday. Yep. Let’s start the conversation by banning MMA. It’s not like parenting or our approach to mental health has any influence on this sort of thing. But wait, it gets worse — so much worse: